During his vice presidency, President Joe Biden allegedly coerced a foreign company affiliated with his son to pay him for protection against the law, according to a credible FBI tip from 2020. We know this because last week, members of Congress finally released to the public the document containing the allegations.
What are Democrats mad at? At the fact that the document exists and at the people who lawfully published it, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. James Comer (R-KY).
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“Chairman Comer’s and Senator Grassley’s decision to publicly release the form is in brazen disregard of the safety of FBI human sources and the integrity of its investigations,” said House Democrats in a memo. “Contrary to Republican messaging, the form provides no new or additional support for their corruption allegations against the President or Hunter Biden.” They also claimed it “further amplifies conspiracy theories.”
To review, a highly credible informant whom the FBI has used for over a decade recalled conversations with Mykola Zlochevsky, an executive at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. Burisma had admittedly put Hunter Biden on its board because he had “influence.”
While a prosecutor’s corruption investigation into Burisma remained open, Zlochevsky allegedly said that no one could prove the company’s innocence in the event of a trial (in other words, Burisma was guilty). But he believed that all would “be okay,” the FBI’s source said, because “Hunter will take care of all of those issues through his dad,” then-Vice President Biden. Zlochevsky allegedly said that the first son and his father coerced him into paying them in return, claiming to have recorded proof.
It is public knowledge that the now-president successfully demanded that Ukraine fire the prosecutor. The FBI has never formally disproved the accompanying claim that he did so to help Burisma.
House Democrats dismiss all of the allegations and condemn concerns about it based on several irrelevant points. Like them, the FBI also tried to claim that releasing the unclassified document would endanger the source’s life. That never made sense because the source’s name could always be redacted, as it is now. With enough pressure, the FBI gave up and handed it over.
The lawmakers also point to a past interview in which Zlochevsky told allies of former President Donald Trump that the Bidens and Burisma never did anything corrupt together. Oh, he denies the allegations! It’s time to call it a day, according to Democrats. I suppose it’s more believable that a trusted source randomly decided to commit felonies by submitting false statements to the FBI?
And how are Republicans impeding the "integrity" of an investigation? An FBI agent reported the allegations in June 2020, and we already know what the FBI was capable of ahead of the presidential election. It helped conceal and discredit reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop while knowing it was real the entire time. It has now conveniently allowed another Biden-related investigation to take over three years.
The FBI’s integrity is part of what this document calls into question, along with the president's fitness for office. Our elected representatives are perfectly within their right to let us know about it and to continue investigating.
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Hudson Crozier is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.